E-cigars dangerous nicotine drug delivery devices

Washington: Electronic cigarettes are in reality crude drug delivery systems for refined nicotine, posing unknown risks with little new benefits to smokers, according to tobacco control experts.

E-cigarettes are constructed to mimic real cigarettes in size and appearance, but contain no tobacco and are not cigarettes at all. In reality they are delivery devices for refined nicotine.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration had said that it would regulate e-cigarettes as "tobacco products" and not as "drug-delivery devices." That action came after federal courts blocked the agency from regulating the products as drug-delivery devices.

The courts maintained that, under the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (FSPTCA), the FDA must regulate as tobacco products any product that contains nicotine from tobacco and that makes no claims to be therapeutic.

These decisions together, the authors note, "upend[ed] the status quo" by having the effect of allowing the sale of unregulated refined nicotine directly to consumers, unless and until the FDA takes further action.

"The court``s decision that e-cigarettes should be regulated as tobacco products and not as drug-delivery devices has substantially delayed the FDA regulatory process that normally protects the public health. It has the practical effect of allowing manufacturers to sell potentially dangerous refined nicotine products directly to consumers," said co-author Nathan K. Cobb, MD, a pulmonologist and assistant professor at Georgetown University Medical Center.

The authors argue that a comprehensive approach to regulating products containing refined nicotine is needed to protect the public``s health and should involve Congress, the courts and the FDA.

The study was recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine.